How to Make an Origami Lily in 5 Minutes (step-by-step instructions)

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The lily is one of the easiest origami designs to do, it’s a simple flower and only requires a single piece of paper and lots of straight edge

folding–you can do it on the first try if you’ll have the paper ready while you watch the video and just do each step as he does it (you’ll probably need to pause it a lot, in which case it’ll take more than 5 minutes, but once you get it down you should be able to do it in less time than that). You’ll need a pen or

pencil to do the curls on the leaves, but even that is optional. You can use any kind of paper you want, although you may have to cut it to make a perfect square out of it. If you want to do this properly or think you might like to continue with this hobby, I’d suggest you get some proper Origami paper like this from Amazon or your local hobby store or wherever. Here we go.

First a few tips

Make sure that you do each fold well–a single bad fold can mess up the whole design. Each fold should be well flattened and a nifty little trick that you can do quite quickly once you get it down is to use your thumbnail by running it along the side of the fold.

It’s important to use paper that’s colored differently on each side so that you can tell front from back. If all you’ve got is plain white paper then take a pencil and lightly color in one side of it.

Wash your hands before you fold: you may not think they’re dirty, but on clean, plain white paper any little bit of dirt or the lightest of smudges will stick out like a sore thumb and ruin your flower 🙁 .

Instructions

Get your paper ready and have at it (maybe watch it once all the way through to get an idea of what you’ll be doing, then start over again and start folding along with him, pausing where you need to):

Additional Resources and Further Reading

If you’re really interested in origami, the best book I’ve ever read on the subject is Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art by Robert J. Lang, one of the world’s foremost origami artists and scientists. It shows you how to actually design your own origami (and includes a lot of pre-made designs with excellent step-by-step instructions and diagrams), something that, until now, was restricted only to elite masters. It’s actually aimed at beginners with the intention of teaching you how to design your own unique origami right from the get-go instead of making you memorize a bunch of other people’s designs first.